hollow shells
by VacuumTan
Summary: going on without one or the other. [basically my take on forsyth's or python's endings if the other dies; a bit shipppy in places]
1. python

When it happens, he still- ever so naively, ever so hopefully- expects Python to reply as though there weren't an arrow pierced through his throat.

* * *

After all's been done and said, after peace has returned to Valentia, after Python has gone cold and found his final resting place—

After all's been done and said, and only then, does Forsyth cry.

* * *

The thing about dreams is that they must, eventually, come to an end.

Knighthood has always been everything Forsyth dreamt of; but a reputation to his lance and a _Sir_ to his name won't bring back the dead.

Forsyth doesn't dream anymore. The last time he did, it had cost a dear someone his life.

* * *

Someday soon, he leaves, because the castle halls hold memories and the capital feels warped and hazy and terrifyingly unreal.

Clive wishes him well. King Alm gives his best regards.

So Forsyth saddles his horse- _his_ , now that its former owner is no more- and deems it inappropriate to shed any more tears.

Lukas sees him to the gates, and has the decency not to smile.

* * *

Eventually, he gets better.

Far out, near the border, fulfilling his knightly duties proudly, he can pretend that all is well. He can pretend to ignore the nostalgia- the heartache, the memories- that come with the sounds, the smells and the sights of a rural place.

He can pretend to be over all that's been lost, over all that is threatening to smother him under its weight if only he would let it, over a cold, dead hand and over Python, _Python,_ _ **Python**_ —

The townsfolk treat him kindly. Many of the kids from the surrounding villages look up to him.

And he owes them at least some moving forward.

* * *

One day, while on patrol, Forsyth comes across a woman who got lost on her way to a nearby town. He sees her safely to her destination, then bids her farewell.

In an odd turn of fate, they end up engaged not a year later and, Forsyth thinks, he really does love her.

Which is why it is so much crueller when the kisses they share remind him slow summer afternoons, of gangly teenage boy limbs and freckles and sunburn, of smiles pressed together clumsily with the taste of cheap red wine—

But with time, memories begin to fade, and holding onto the dead quarter of a century, buried far away in the capital, won't do anyone good.

So when the time to stand at the altar comes and he recites his vows in a tiny church, in a tiny village, unbeknownst to family and friends, and he promises to love his wife _until death doth part them_ , he wants to hold true to that, just as he'd done once before.

* * *

The years rush by him in the small, rural town that never seems to change. The One Kingdom prospers under King Alm's and Queen Celica's rule. Times remain somewhat peaceful.

His wife is still beautiful, even as her hair starts to grey. The wrinkles on her face from years of smiling match the lines on Forsyth's own.

Their eldest daughter just got married.

Life goes on.

* * *

Forsyth gives up his knightly duties only when his legs grow too weak to carry them out anymore.

It feels as though a long-dead dream has finally come to an end.

His wife passes in her sleep that year.

* * *

He waits out his numbered days, taking to reading after all this time despite his corroding eyesight.

Death isn't scary; a part of him has lain buried since age 25.

* * *

Forsyth has had a long life.

* * *

 **a/n: poor babby is so gay for python, he won't even marry unless he dies after which he becomes a husk of a person for a while and then gets a replacement goldfish for a wife; you may call this a controversial interpretation, but i cried too hard while writing this to care.  
**


	2. forsyth

The aftershocks of a thunder spell still cause spasms to run through Forsyth's lifeless hand. Python wonders if knowing his death had come on the battlefield would make the idiot proud.

* * *

The fool is knighted, post mortem. His burial is befitting of a man of his newly acquired status and he's hailed as somewhat of a war hero; a commoner by birth, laid to rest next to nobles and kings, as though to prove just how he'd done the impossible and risen through the ranks.

Python fails to see any good in all that.

* * *

After that, he is at loss.

With Forsyth gone and no great aspirations of his own to chase after, with nothing but an aching, broken heart to guide him—

He spends a fortnight contemplating things and people, for once, give him all the space he needs.

* * *

Python sleeps a lot, and yet it's never enough.

He rises at the crack of dawn, not of his own volition, woken by the phantom of a boisterous voice ripping him out of his dream.

Sometimes, he cries, but those are the days when he doesn't bother getting up at all.

But none of that behaviour does Forsyth justice.

* * *

And when he's at the very end of his rope, Python finally realises what he's meant to do.

So when he stands before the new king and queen and vows to serve the One Kingdom, and when he feels the cold steel of Alm's sword touch his shoulders, and when he rises and the applause rings hollow—

He promises to work hard. Not to a fledgling, unified nation, nor to a village boy made king, nor to anything else honourable- he promises it to the footsteps ahead of him, the pattern of a spirited gait and the depth of a childhood dream, now left for him to follow into.

That's why he needs to apply himself- try as hard as Forsyth would have and then some, give knighthood his all as though it had been _his_ goal all along.

The congratulations he receives from those who know come with a sad smile.

* * *

Had anyone told Python a year ago that he would make for an exemplary knight- diligent, hard-working, focussed, strong and skilled and ready to give it his all- he would have laughed. With things as they are now, however, he doesn't have anywhere else to go but down this road.

He wonders if his father would be proud of him. If he would be proud to see his good-for-nothing of a son, adept only at things of his choosing, stand strong and proud and with a Sir to his name and a bright green, dented pauldron for his most ghastly medal of shame.

And maybe if Auntie- Forsyth's sweet, kindly mother- could forgive him, if she could forgive him for returning home with countless battles under his belt and word of her son's demise on his lips.

And of course, if none of this would have happened, if the both of them would be living humble little lives in their humble little village, reading books and building chairs, had they only stayed home.

Well, so he wonders, but time and time again he readies arrow after arrow and takes the lives of small fry criminals and bandits as though they weren't somebody's comrades, too.

* * *

He gets used to the scars- and he has plenty of them, now, because he is reckless and stupid like some other idiot who has spent the past two years pushing daisies.

He's got ugly burns down his arms, but his hands still function; he has pulled many an arrow out of his shoulders, and his movements aren't as fluid as they used to be; his torso feels stiff with all the scar tissue pulled taut over it.

They're medals of honour, though, he tells himself, every time he stands among the others knights, awaiting Sir Clive's orders with his head held high, and his body as scarred as his heart, and fatigue in his bones and borrowed dreams—

 _Dreams, dreams, dreams._

* * *

The thing with dreams is, they can't sustain him. A knight's salary can, however.

They can't do anything but remind him of what's been lost. Lots of things do.

But he still likes to pretend that they can hold him together another day.

* * *

And then, there's an uprising, somewhere up north- some rebels who are still clinging to delusions of past grandeur, peasants strong enough to hold up a pitchfork but not the weight of their own lives.

It's another off-the-mill uproar, no trouble at all.

* * *

But suddenly, it's cold steel and red, red blood, and then, it's black nothingness and Python's almost glad.

* * *

 **a/n: so this one didn't make me cry but it made me shrivel up and die inside. check out my profile in the next days if you wanna bc i feel like i gotta compensate by writing the happy endings they deserve. (bc mommy allie doesn't let any of her boys and girls die in her playthroughs. bc that would be weak.)**


End file.
